April 7

Leaving Kyoto today. Matt and I were up and showered and headed out to grab coffee at 7-11 since our discovery that the latte there was as good as the places that cost three times as much. Dan met us there and we all bought some breakfast food and took it back to our place. Matt and I had yogurt with some smoothie mix added for sweetness and nuts. The closest I’ve come to a normal breakfast for me. 

Armed with breakfast and coffee, we headed for the train. We managed to board before the rain started. Today is cloudy and cold with rain in the forecast. We got to Osaka at about 11 am and left our bags at our AirBnB. They were still cleaning but kind enough to allow us to leave our bags.

It was so cold. So cold. Temps in the low 50s with wind. But we wore our coats and headed out to explore.  We walked to Doutonbori Street which is a famous street in Osaka, full of hole in the wall restaurants and all kinds of shops, tehotchkes galore everywhere. The Japanese love what I consider the ultimate “junk”. It is getting close to lunch time and Mohan really wants to eat at a crab restaurant where everything is about crab. We all agreed and headed in. We got a five star experience in this restaurant with our own private room and treated like royalty. The food was good but I’m not a crab lover so less than perfect but still such an enjoyable experience. I don’t need to ever eat crab sashimi again. Ugh. Raw crab is not my thing. The dessert was fresh matcha over vanilla ice cream. I’m developing a taste for matcha and I really enjoyed it.

Our next stop was Osaka Castle Park. It is so beautiful here with a gigantic moat filled with water and cherry trees lining the sides. We are freezing though. The wind goes right through you. Sun has been promised later this afternoon but right now, it is hard to believe we will see the sun today. We wandered around and enjoyed the beautiful grounds but decided not to purchase entry into the castle. Apparently, it is a museum with samurai history and none of us felt compelled. 

We are headed to the Umeda Sky Building next. We are going to watch the sunset from the top of this amazing sky scraper. We stopped for a coffee while we waited for some time to go by and then headed over. The sun is finally out! We saw a beautiful sunset and incredible views of the city from here. 

After we had our fill of the sunset and Matt had studied all the architecture of the building, we headed out. We wanted to go a restaurant that serves oconomeaki, the dish Osaka is known for having some of the best. The restaurant Dan wanted to go to was easily able to seat us. It was so delicious. This is one of my favorite dishes here.

After dinner, we walked to a place that had strawberries dipped in chocolate. There are strawberries for sell everywhere here but very hard to find them dipped in chocolate. Mohan found this special place that had strawberries in milk, dark and white chocolate. It was delicious but so expensive. Daniel and Mohan enjoyed one each but Matt and I shared. It was plenty.

Finally done with this day. We headed back to our room and got ready for bed. We did stop along the way and bought some cough drops for Matt. His cough has been rough and he kept both of us up for an hour or so the night before with coughing. I was not interested in repeating that. 

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